Page 11 of The Secret Sanchez Heir
‘And no need for you to see us off,’ she decided to tell him, to which he raised his eyebrows and kept looking at her until the colour crawled into her cheeks. ‘We’ll let ourselves out,’ she finished lamely. Face flaming, Abigail dashed out of the kitchen, headed straight to the bedroom she had been allocated and only allowed herself to relax when that bedroom door was well and truly locked behind her.
* * *
She woke to the sound of knocking on her bedroom door, and when she sat up she realised with some dismay that it was after eight-thirty. She had planned to be up and out before seven. So much for that.
There was no service on her phone. It seemed that service was only available here and there in the house and her bedroom was not in that category. Still, she had texted the situation to Claire from downstairs the evening before, and could only hope that everything was all right. She was dying to get back to London.
The knocking continued. Abigail didn’t have time to think about her state of undress. She’d had to sleep without anything on, because the alternative had been her work clothes, so she wrapped a bath towel round her and opened the bedroom door a crack to see Leandro outside, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and looking unfairly drop-dead gorgeous in a pair of low-slung jeans and a thick cream jumper. She was conscious that the towel tightly wrapped round her barely skimmed her thighs.
He pushed the door open further with one foot and then folded his arms. ‘I hate to wake Sleeping Beauty,’ he said, eyeing the bank of windows behind her, across which the curtains had been tightly pulled, ‘but I’m the bearer of bad tidings, I’m afraid...’ Leandro watched with male appreciation at the enchanting picture Abigail made as she bolted towards the windows and yanked back the curtains with one hand while the other kept a tight hold on the towel.
She’d blown him off but there was no way he had any intention of retreating humbly to the sidelines to lick his wounds. That wasn’t his style. He’d already determined the reason behind his malaise ever since they had broken up and he intended to do something about that. It would just take slightly longer and require slightly more thought than he had originally imagined.
For instance, he had optimistically harboured the assumption that one wild night in the hay would do the trick. So she’d knocked him back but, even if she hadn’t, he could see that one night might not be enough to get her out of his system.
He’d somehow managed to forget the effect she could have on his libido. He was supremely confident about winning her over to his way of thinking because he had proved that she was still as turned on by him as he was by her. He was already gearing up for the thrill of that challenge as he heard her utter a soft exclamation of anguish as she saw that the snow, which should have gone away, hadn’t. Out here, in the countryside, there were no gritted roads to give the illusion of things being done to remedy the situation either. The open fields that surrounded his palatial country manor were white and untouched. Not a gritting tractor in sight.
Abigail spun round to find that Leandro had entered the bedroom and was standing right behind her, and she jumped back and looked up at him. Their eyes tangled and for a few seconds she recalled what it had felt like to have him down between her thighs, bringing her to an orgasm that had been as devastating to her peace of mind as a runaway train mounting a crowded pavement. Dampness pooled between her legs, shocking and embarrassing.
‘And it’s only going to get worse.’ He didn’t bother to try and soothe her into any positive thoughts on that score. ‘Out here, the snow can last for days. That’s why I seldom risk coming here in winter. What I’m saying here is that there’s no way the car that brought you here can take you back. In fact, if you turn around and angle your body to the left, you can just about make out the shape of it semi-buried under white. Hal’s been out to have a go at it and he managed to drive it a few metres before giving up. I doubt he could even get the thing out of my drive, and it’s miles from here before you’re lucky enough to hit any kind of road that might have been salted.’
‘No, don’t say that,’ was all Abigail could find to respond, aghast at this development. ‘You don’t understand, Leandro. I have to get back to London.’
‘I’ve talked to your driver and he’s more than happy to wait it out here, which will in all likelihood be for another night. I shall ensure that he is fed and watered. Between us, I get the impression that the man sees this as a weekend break from a household of tetchy kids.’
‘I don’t care about whether Hal is willing to stay another night here!’
‘Well, you should,’ Leandro pointed out, ‘considering he’s your means of transport out. Unless you’re insured on the car? But either way it’s moot. The country roads will be impassable, anyway.’
Abigail wanted to sob. ‘This is all your fault,’ she accused in a wobbly voice and Leandro shot her a perplexed look that further inflamed her because it reeked of insincerity.
‘Explain,’ he said drily. ‘You must think I have superhuman powers if I can conjure up a fall of snow simply to scupper your plans for leaving. But, before you pull another “damsel in distress” fainting act, you’ll be reassured to know that I have a similar problem. I, too, need to get down to London. Bear in mind that this weekend here was sprung on me as an unfortunate surprise. I hadn’t planned on opening up the house until early spring.’
Abigail glumly wondered what that had to do with anything. So both of them would be stuck here. Little did he know that, whatever important deal he had to close, it was as nothing compared to the responsibilities she urgently had to return to.
‘So what?’ she said shortly.
‘So you should go and change,’ Leandro murmured.
Which was a sharp reminder to Abigail that she was still clutching a towel with absolutely nothing on underneath while he stood there, smirking.
She saw red and swallowed hard because this was not how she had envisaged her ring-bearing trip to the Cotswolds ending. Everything had gone wrong. The weather had been hideous. There had been no loving fiancée for the ring she had carefully transported. She had crashed into her past when she had least expected it. She had become a stupid victim of all those physical responses she knew she should have put behind her and, to top it off, meeting Leandro again out of the blue had forced her to confront all the decisions she had made in good faith.
And, as if all that wasn’t bad enough, she was now going to be stuck here with him because fate couldn’t do the decent thing and clear a path for her to return to London where she would have the peace and space to think things through.
‘I will need to make some calls,’ she muttered, and wanted to smack him very hard when he grinned at her.
‘You’re getting worked up over nothing,’ he said in a placating voice that made her teeth snap together. ‘Hal is going to be staying on another night because he will have to drive the car back down to London. Fortunately for you, there is alternative transport.’
‘What do you mean?’ Abigail frowned because, aside from skiing their way cross-country, she couldn’t think of any other means of manoeuvring in the snowy conditions. And that wouldn’t work because she had never been near a pair of skis in her entire life.
‘I’ve had my guy fly my helicopter up this morning. I have a landing pad and, as long as the snow isn’t too deep, it is always possible for me to get out if I need to.’
‘You had your guy fly your helicopter up?’
‘It’s a luxury, I know,’ Leandro imparted smugly.
‘So...we’re going to take a helicopter down to London?’
